Daintree

While thousands of people visit the Daintree, in far North Queensland, you can still escape from it all and experience the ancient sense of this place. Famously known as the place where 'the rainforest meets the reef', it is home to one of the largest range of animals and plants on earth. It contains 30% of the frog, marsupial and reptile species in Australia, and 65% of Australia's bat and butterfly species. The forests are ancient and can track their lineage back around 135 million years. These forests act as a reminder of what much of Australia was like when it was far wetter through the presence of primitive flowering plants. For instance, the ancient rainforests stretched out as far as the Uluru/Ayers Rock. Now they exist in small pockets—none of them is more impressive than the Daintree where coral reefs push up against dazzling white beaches that then merge into the tropical rainforest.